Today's Liberal News

The Father of American Pop Music Turns 200

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Two-hundred years ago, on July 4, 1826, the United States celebrated its 50th birthday. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died. And another enduring voice was born: the songwriter Stephen Foster.
The timing is fitting, for Foster is a quintessentially American figure.

The Other Case for Birthright Citizenship

“We’re in a new world now,” Solicitor General John Sauer told the U.S. Supreme Court during oral argument this April in the birthright-citizenship case Trump v. Barbara, “where 8 billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who’s a U.S. citizen.” Chief Justice John Roberts quickly shot him down, replying, “Well, it’s a new world,” but it’s “the same Constitution.

Even Trump Can’t Believe How Well This Book Has Sold

Literary agents and book editors are in the business of selling stories, so drama comes easily to them. Even temporary sales slumps breed alarmist pronouncements; book parties in disfavored genres begin to feel like wakes, sending off one more spirit to the inevitable afterworld of the remainder shelf. The novel has apparently been declared dead 30 times since 1902.

America Is Having MacBook Sticker Shock

There are many things you can buy for $10,000: A nose job. With luck, a used car. A middling ticket to the World Cup final. Or you could purchase a MacBook Pro. That’s how much the highest-end, fully loaded version of Apple’s laptop now costs—$3,000 more than it did last week.
Maybe you don’t need the most powerful MacBook Pro. But last Thursday, Apple announced price hikes on most of its products. Apple’s cheapest laptop, the MacBook Neo, debuted for $600 just a few months ago.

Movies Are Good, Actually

Are movies bad for us? Do they waste our time, dumb down the culture, even harm society? On-screen, stars depict unspeakable acts of violence and cruelty. More subtly, movies make bad choices look appealing; viewers might watch The Godfather and think not merely I want Michael Corleone’s suit, but I want to smoke like he smokes—and maybe run my business like him too.

“The American Revolution Was Hardly an Anti-Colonial Movement”: UCLA Historian Robin D. G. Kelley

Ahead of the July Fourth holiday and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we speak with the acclaimed scholar Robin D. G. Kelley, who examines how Black radicals have interpreted the document throughout U.S. history in a new essay for Hammer & Hope. Although the declaration famously asserts that “all men are created equal,” Kelley says that clearly did not extend to Indigenous or enslaved Black people.

“Rule of Law vs. Rule of Billionaires”: Supreme Court Says Trump Can Fire Regulators, Except at Fed

In a 6-3 ruling this week that overturned nine decades of precedent, the Supreme Court granted President Donald Trump the power to fire and replace officials at independent government agencies like the Federal Trade Commission. But in a separate 5-4 decision, the justices ruled that Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook can stay in her job as she challenges Trump’s efforts to fire her.